Space Elevator: August 2005

"We now have 7 teams that have climber hardware and are intending to show up for the 2005 competition. The competition date has been pushed back 3 weeks - we will start accepting hardware on the original Sept 30th date, but will spend 3 weeks debugging both our infrastructure and the team's hardware - this is the first time this hardware is being brought together, and we expect integration to require some extra time and attention."

The competition is broken into two area, the Climber/Power Beaming teams and the Tether teams. To date the web site lists 8 teams competing in 2005 for the Climber/Power Beaming competition and 19 teams for the 2006 competition. So far no teams are listed for the Tether competition.

Several people have pointed out to me that IEEE Spectrum's august cover story is about the space elevator. The feature article was written by space elevator guru Brad Edwards. The article provides a good current overview of where we are and what challenges lay ahead.